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March 28, 2024, 09:07:50 pm

Author Topic: King Henry IV Part 1: Henry's Initial Speech Analysis  (Read 2764 times)

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zuriah

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King Henry IV Part 1: Henry's Initial Speech Analysis
« on: February 19, 2019, 08:16:56 pm »
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Hey, here's an answer to a question (not an essay question) that I got in class and would love to get some feedback!

How does Henry's speech establish the complications that arise from a disruption to Medieval values such as The Great Chain of Being and The Divine Right of Kings?

The opening of the play, indeed King Henry's speech, connects the Medieval value of the God-ordained right to be king, with the tumultuous socio-political atmosphere during King Henry IV's reign. The King's speech provides an insight into the burden of kingship, made more burdensome by his usurpation of Richard II. His speech is characterised by exhaustion, worn by the "civil butchery" which clashed "like meteors of a troubled heaven". Wearied strife, :So shaken as we are", overshadows King Henry's apparent pacifism "No more the thirsty entrance of this soil shall daub her lips with her own children's blood", as he is contradicted by his eagerness to "Chase these pagans in those holy fields". King Henry's desire to seek atonement by leading a crusade to the Holy Land reveals the guilt accompanied by his accession to the throne. The dignity, seriousness and melancholy of his address is achieved through the measured, even pace of verse and anaphoric phrases: "No more shall entrenching war channel her fields" and "No more shall [the ill-sheafed knife] cut his master". The King's optimistic crusade for redemption as the illegitimate monarch, to "March all one way, and be no more opposed" accentuates the engrained fragility and hostility within the empire as a result of his usurpation for the crown. Describing the vulnerable war-torn England, "Bruise her flow'rets with the armed hoofs", whereby the feminine personification and natural imagery accentuates the delicate political atmosphere as a consequence of disruption to the Great Chain of Being.